paulraphael

We just need a potion that can turn pink meat gray without changing the flavor. It would resolve so many epicure-barbarian standoffs.

Ahh, sorry. I read that wrong. That doesn't sound as bad. I still suspect a little acid would be a big improvement.

Looks like a recipe that needs work. It's a mild cut of meat with a milk and cream sauce, seasoned just with onion. The most obvious fix would be adding an acid. This could be some tart white wine to deglaze the pan (reduce it a lot before adding the other liquids) or just some sherry vinegar stirred in at the end. That said, a cream sauce on tenderloin seems a bit pallid and unappealing. I understand the desire to add some richness, but suspect that if you got both richness and flavor from the sauce, the meat would just disappear. I like to tart up tenderloins with a relatively lean and bright sauce. Something with acidic fruit or chutney or reduced stock or wine / vinegar—bright flavors that act more as a condiment that complement. Tenderloin needs some kind of accent.

Time must be a factor as well, since I got off flavors in 90 minutes at 85C.

Searzall?

I see a lot of cooks at NYC delis using their cheap serrated knives for absolutely everything. These guys are usually really fast and efficient at what they do. I think they use the sandwich knife because that's what they're given, and because doing everything with one knife is quickest. But I wouldn't follow their example unless working at a deli. As far as "there are ways to use a serrated knife besides sawing," yeah, if by sawing you mean cutting back and forth. But the knife will always cut like a saw ... which is to say, it will tend to rip, rather than separate the food cleanly. This is a simplification ... under a microscope, you you'd see that all knives rip. But serrated knives do it on a macro scale that causes more damage to the food.

I wonder if the noxious compounds are broken down under such prolonged cooking. Why else 7 hours? They'll be soft after 1 or 2. If I knew the science behind this, it would be easier to come up with cooking methods that avoid the problem. Re: onions ... I haven't gotten bad flavors cooking them sous vide. But I do cut down on all the usual mirepoix veggies in preparations like stocks, by as much as 2/3. I find s.v. cooking amplifies their contribution relative to other ingredients. Carrots especially.

A lot of people use serrated knives on tomatoes. There are even some serrated utility knives marketed as 'tomato knives.' I'd argue that it's a bad practice, because serrated knives chew up delicate foods like tomatoes. You won't get a clean cut. The practice lingers because you can easily cut a tomato with a dull serrated knife, but not with a dull smooth knife. And most people's knives are in a permanent state of dullness. Serrations are a crutch that lets you get away with this. But anyone who cares enough to learn cutting techniques should also learn to sharpen. If you have even halfway sharp unserrated knives, you'll cut a tomato more cleanly than you will with serrated ones.

Didn't they say they were going to open source the API, so that anyone could write software for it? I would expect that software development isn't what Anova does best.

I wouldn't trust anyone who uses a serrated knife for anything besides bread and cake. There isn't much technique to cutting these things. Just don't apply cutting pressure when you're changing directions, and you should get a clean cut. The only thing hard about serrated knives is sharpening them.

For what it's worth, the time I got the bad flavor was vegetables only (mostly celeriac and fennel), cooked at 85°C for 90 minutes.

I kinda sorta like the idea, but not at the going price—was it $11?? The claim that they'll last 3000 uses seems dubious. Silicone stuff rips pretty easily with rough treatment. If they came down to a couple of bucks each, so you could have dozen of them around in a few sizes, and expect them to last a year or two or three, I'd be tempted.

Just make sure there aren't any hermetically sealed parts that could explode ...

In fairness to the Times, wasn't this my recommendation? I made some pork chops last night, but had some thick-ish ones ... about 1-1/4". Cooked sv at 57C, then seared. Possibly because of leanness, these cuts seem to cook through unusually fast when searing. And these were relatively well-marbled as loin chops go. From a nice farm upstate. What I saw in my finished chops wasn't so much an even, overcooked layer around the outside, but that they simply overcooked in the places where the chops were thinner, like under 1/2". They were pretty unevenly cut. In the thick parts, they cooked well, without much gradient. This is something I haven't noticed before. One thing I do with a lot of proteins, but especially with pork and fish, is treat the outside with an alkali to get it to brown faster. My favorite secret sauce is a 1:5 blend of baking soda and dextrose. You can sprinkle it on or disperse in oil and brush it on. It helps you get a nice crust very quickly. But even with this help, I was surprised how quickly the thinner parts cooked through.

Interesting, thanks. How do you find the difference between garlic powder and sauteed garlic (I assume you're just talking about sweating the garlic a bit)?

That was some really big typography. But I don't see how those authors came to that conclusion based on the source they cited. While the original study (based on 21 pig farms in Argentina) found that "...pigs raised outdoors were more likely to be infected than pigs raised in total or partial confinement," the real correlation with trichinosis was if they were fed waste products that included meat. Organic pork just means that the pigs were fed a diet that meets the organic rules. The final conclusion: "All pigs raised under good hygienic and sanitary conditions were negative for Trichinella infection by both artificial digestion and ELISA" The takeaway is to buy from good farms. There are good and bad organic farms, good and bad conventional ones.

I haven't tried anything yet. Hoping for a simple solution. It's definitely sulfur compounds causing the off-flavors. I just don't know if they're being produce enzymatically ( and then what times/temperatures are required to deactivate the enzymes) or if they're already there and need to be broken down directly by heat (and then, again, by how much).

I think in real life it would take trial and error using the same range and pan and similarly cut chops. A line cook who has to do dozens of these would have a few sacrificial ones at the beginning in order to nail the timing. But if you've only got 2 or three 1/4" thick pork chops, and want them perfectly cooked inside and out, it's going to take a dose of luck in addition to skill.

Does anyone have reliable tricks for getting good flavor out of garlic in a sous-vide bag? I'm talking about using it just as an aromatic, while cooking proteins, or as part of a stock or vegetable puree. The one time I forgot the maxim to leave raw garlic out of the bag, I ended up with celeriac puree that tasted like a tire fire. I see some recommendations to just use less, but in my experience the problem wasn't just too much garlic flavor. It was acrid, inedible flavor. Using less works fine for me with other mirepoix veggies. I also see recipes for s.v. garlic confit (listed by both Anova and Nomiku) and for some reason people say these taste good. How can this be? There was a thread questioning the old saw about blanching garlic multiple times in milk, which didn't come to any hard conclusions. I'm wondering if a quick blanch in water before adding to the s.v. bag, to deactivate the enzymes, would do the trick. But I don't know the actual chemistry behind the garlic tire fire, so am not confident this would work. Some cooks advocate garlic powder; I'm hoping to not resort to that. Thoughts?

With thin meat it's very difficult to get a good sear without overcooking the inside. Even if you have a commercial range and a million BTUs, the timing is difficult because retained heat can cook the meat through within just a couple of minutes of removing from the pan. It can be done, but the timing has to be maddeningly precise.

For a followup experiment maybe you can glue 3 thin pork chops into a single fat one with activa ...

If you really wanted to make a pet project of it, you could, 1) sous-vide it medium or medium-rare 2) freeze it solid 3) sear it This technique has the rather sci-fi name 'cryosearing,' but is just a basic way to exploit the physics when you want to sear something thin without cooking it through. The results should be perfect. Whether or not it's worth anyone's time is another question ...

According to the CDC, trichinosis infections have been dwindling close to zero in the U.S. Between 2008 and 2012, there was a median of 15 cases per year in the country. 10 of these were related to commercial pork. This means one case per 3 million people. Bear meat and venison seem to be more worrisome. Compare with annual deaths by lightning: you're almost 4 times as likely to DIE from a lightning strike as you are to be infected by trichinosis from commercial pork. Which still isn't a zero. If you're worried about it, you have the option to completely kill trichina without completely killing your pork chop. The easiest way is sous-vide. According to research done by Modernist Cuisine, holding pork at 130°F / 54.4°C for 112 minutes (very pink!) will do it. So will holding it at 140° / 60°C for 12 minutes (respectably medium). This is a rare case where the research points to times that are even more conservative than government regulations—the USDA says hold at 130°F for 60 minutes, 140°F for one minute. As far as killing the usual pathogens, pork is no different from beef. The whole idea that it has to be well-done is just old mythology.

I've used boric acid, not borax (closely related but not the same compound). It's so effective I feel kind of bad about it. I've mixed it with confectioners sugar or sugar syrup (around 1:10 or so) and put it where they, go on little pieces of foil, and within a couple of days the entire colony is gone. Even if they live way outside, in the garden, but have sent a regiment into my kitchen to commandeer some spilled honey, the boric acid will take out the whole population. No worries with pets. The LD50 in mammals is lower than table salt.

This.